Professional Announcements

Robert Train, Modern Languages and Literatures, presented a paper, "Learning to be Bilingual: The Use of Student Ethnographic Journals in the Spanish Class," in April at the UC Language Consortium Conference on Theoretical & Pedagogical Perspectives at the University of California, Los Angeles. This paper describes an ongoing teacher research project on the use of electronic journals by Sonoma State students studying Spanish at the lower-division level to explore identities and ideologies surrounding Spanish, its use and learning in California. The project has been supported in part by a recent RSCAP mini-grant.

Richard J. Senghas, Anthropology and Linguistics, will be a Visiting Scholar at Stockholm University during his sabbatical year, beginning this July. He will be based in the Department of Scandinavian Languages and work with the Linguistic Institute at Stockholm University, as well. Senghas will study Swedish Sign Language, conduct linguistic analysis of SSL, and research the history of Swedish international assistance to improve special education for deaf students in Nicaragua during the 1980s and 1990s. In August, Senghas will deliver a public lecture on Nicaraguan Sign Language at Hyat-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. While at Hyat-Watt, he will also conduct seminars on sign language variation and issues of language and culture for a graduate program in sign language pedagogy.